Robert Silverberg
Our Lady of the Sauropods
August. 0750 hours. Ten minutes since the module melt-down. I can’t see the wreckage from here, but I can smell it, bitter and sour against the moist tropical air. I’ve found a cleft in the rocks, a kind of shallow cavern, where I’ll be safe from the dinosaurs for a while. It’s shielded by thick clumps of cycads, and in any case it’s too small for the big predators to enter. But sooner or later I’m going to need food, and then what? I have no weapons. How long can one woman last, stranded and more or less helpless, aboard a habitat unit not quite five hundred meters in diameter that she’s sharing with a bunch of active, hungry dinosaurs?
I keep telling myself that none of this is really happening. Only I can’t quite convince myself of that.
My escape still has me shaky. I can’t get out of my mind the funny little bubbling sound the tiny powerpak made as it began to overheat. In something like fourteen seconds my lovely mobile module became a charred heap of fused-together junk, taking with it my communicator unit, my food supply, my laser gun andjust about everything else. And but for the warning that funny little sound gave me, I’d be so much charred junk now, too. Better off that way, most likely.
When I close my eyes, I imagine I can see Habitat Vronsky floating serenely in orbit a mere 120 kilometers away. What a beautiful sight! The walls gleaming like platinum, the great mirror collecting sunlight and flashing it into the windows, the agricultural satellites wheeling around it like a dozen tiny moons. I could almost reach out and touch it. Tap on the shielding and murmur, “Help me, come for me, rescue me.” But I might just as well be out beyond Neptune as sitting here in the adjoining Lagrange slot. No way I can call for help. The moment I move outside this cleft in the rock I’m at the mercy of my saurians and their mercy is not likely to be tender.
Now it’s beginning to rain—artificial, like practically everything else on Dino Island. But it gets you just as wet as the natural kind. And clammy. Pfaugh.
Jesus, what am I going to do?
0815 hours. The rain is over for now. It’ll come again in six hours. Astonishing how muggy, dank, thick, the air is. Simply breathing is hard work, and I feel as though mildew is forming on my lungs. I miss Vronsky’s clear, crisp, everlasting springtime air. On previous trips to Dino Island I never cared about the climate. But, of course, I was snugly englobed in my mobile unit, a world within a world, self-contained, self-sufficient, isolated from all contact with this place and its creatures. Merely a roving eye, traveling as I pleased, invisible, invulnerable.
Can they sniff me in here?
We don’t think their sense of smell is very acute. Sharper than a crocodile’s, not as good as a cat’s. And the stink of the burned wreckage dominates the place at the moment. But I must reek with fear-signals. I feel calm now, but it was different as I went desperately scrambling out of the module during the meltdown. Scattering pheromones all over the place, I bet.
Commotion in the cycads. Something’s coming in here!
Long neck, small birdlike feet, delicate grasping hands. Not to worry. Struthiomimus, is all-dainty dino, fragile, birdlike critter barely two meters high. Liquid golden eyes staring solemnly at me. It swivels its head from side to side, ostrichlike, click-click, as if trying to make up its mind about coming closer to me. Scat! Go peck a stegosaur. Let me alone.
The Struthiomimus withdraws, making little clucking sounds.
Closest I’ve ever been to a live dinosaur. Glad it was one of the little ones.
0900 hours. Getting hungry. What am I going to eat?
They say roasted cycad cones aren’t too bad. How about raw ones? So many plants are edible when cooked and poisonous otherwise. I never studied such things in detail. Living in our antiseptic little L5 habitats, we’re not required to be outdoors—wise, after all. Anyway, there’s a fleshy-looking cone on the cycad just in front of the cleft, and it’s got an edible look. Might as well try it raw, because there’s no other way. Rubbing sticks together will get me nowhere.
Getting the cone off takes some work. Wiggle, twist, snap, tear—there. Not as fleshy as it looks. Chewy, in fact. Like munching on rubber. Decent flavor, though. And maybe some useful carbohydrate.
The shuttle isn’t due to pick me up for thirty days. Nobody’s apt to come looking for me, or even think about me, before then. I’m on my own. Nice irony there: I was desperate to get out of Vronsky and escape from all the bickering and maneuvering, the endless meetings and memoranda, the feinting and counterfeinting, all the ugly political crap that scientists indulge in when they turn into administrators. Thirty days of blessed isolation on Dino Island! An end to that constant dull throbbing in my head from the daily infighting with Director Sarber. Pure research again! And then the meltdown, and here I am cowering in the bushes wondering which comes first, starving or getting gobbled.
0930 hours. Funny thought just now. Could it have been sabotage? Consider. Sarber and I, feuding for weeks over the issue of opening Dino Island to tourists. Crucial staff vote coming up next month. Sarber says we can raise millions a year for expanded studies with a program of guided tours and perhaps some rental of the island to film companies. I say that’s risky both for the dinos and the tourists, destructive of scientific values, a distraction, a sellout. Emotionally the staff’s with me, but Sarber waves figures around, showy fancy income-projections, and generally shouts and blusters. Tempers running high, Sarber in lethal fury at being opposed, barely able to hide his loathing for me. Circulating rumors—designed to get back to me—that if I persist in blocking him, he’ll abort my career. Which is malarkey, of course. He may outrank me, but he has no real authority over me. And then his politeness yesterday. (Yesterday? An aeon ago.) Smiling smarmily, telling me he hopes I’ll rethink my position during my observation tour on the island. Wishing me well. Had he gimmicked my powerpak? I guess it isn’t hard if you know a little engineering, and Sarber does. Some kind of timer set to withdraw the insulator rods? Wouldn’t be any harm to Dino Island itself, just a quick, compact, localized disaster that implodes and melts the unit and its passenger, so sorry, terrible scientific tragedy, what a great loss. And even if by some fluke I got out of the unit in time, my chances of surviving here as a pedestrian for thirty days would be pretty skimpy, right? Right.
It makes me boil to think that someone’s willing to murder you over a mere policy disagreement. It’s barbaric. Worse than that: it’s tacky.
1130 hours. I can’t stay crouched in this cleft forever. I’m going to explore the island and see if I can find a better hideout. This one simply isn’t adequate for anything more than short-term huddling. Besides, I’m not as spooked as I was right after the meltdown. I realize now that I’m not going to find a tyrannosaur hiding behind every tree. And tyrannosaurs aren’t going to be much interested in scrawny stuff like me.
Anyway I’m a quick-witted higher primate. If my humble mammalian ancestors seventy million years ago were able to elude dinosaurs well enough to survive and inherit the earth, I should be able to keep from getting eaten for the next thirty days. And with or without my cozy little mobile module, I want to get out into this place, whatever the risks. Nobody’s ever had a chance to interact this closely with the dinos before.
Good thing I kept this pocket recorder when I jumped from the module. Whether I’m a dino’s dinner or not, I ought to be able to set down some useful observations.